WhiteBoySamurai

The second of the Izumo class helicopter carriers, Japan's largest warship since WW2, was launched a few days ago, and given the name of one of the IJN's most infamous fleet carriers. 

http://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3048

Her flight deck is actually longer and wider than WW2 Kaga. While the Izumo class are not intended as offensive weapons, I'm sure the choice of name will rustle some jimmies in certain countries.

The one in that pack is the Komatsu LAV (Light Armored Vehicle), which is a completely different animal. 

I could put together a LAV-25 fairly quickly if you really need one.

Yes, this is a long-hull straight-deck Essex (CV-14 and most of her sisters that followed), as originally requested.

Unwrapping is nearly finished, except for the catapults, arresting wires, and eventually the blast deflectors for the Korean War era refit. I've started with some texturing already, to make sure I have uniform scaling for the deck edges and other areas.

I'm also working on a seamless texture for the deck. I'm basing it off of photos and professional scale models, like this one:

Ooh, is that a Talwar for the Indian Navy?

Thank you very much for all your work.

 

To complete the actual French Frigates are you going to make the D614/D615 FAA ?

 

And do you plan to make the FREMM DA variant ?

I was thinking about doing the Georges Legues and Cassard, but I may not have time for them. I need to finish my current big project and then get back to the Asian theater first.

The air defense FREMM is only an idea on paper right now. When they build a real one, I'll make a model of it.

On the Essex Class, since we are not going to be using the hanger deck catapult in game, you only really need two different catapult layouts. One for the single starboard side catapult only flight decks and one for the dual catapult decks. There is no need to do a flight deck without any cat visible for the Essex CV-9 because even though she only had a catapult after May 6, 1943 the visible track on the deck for it was there from the start and she saw no action before her first catapult was installed.

 

I did a little more research and found out when the Essex class ships WWII configurations were commissioned and decommissioned as well as the dates that the single catapult ships underwent the refits that installed the second deck catapult. As such I was able to put together two "_Names.ini" files for you. One "Essex1C_NAMES.ini" is for the single cat ships and the other "Essex2C_NAMES.ini" is for dual cat ships. "EndDate=" and "StartDate=" for ships that appear in both files take into account the dates they underwent refit.

 

Essex Names Lists.7z

Your research is much appreciated.

To be clear, I'm only doing the long-hull (CV-14) version, since that's the one that was requested. The short-hulls have significant structural differences, so reworking the model would not be that easy. 

I finally have the island, walkways, deck edges, and platforms seamlessly unwrapped and organized. Now I just need to fit them all on a single texture sheet, or otherwise add yet *another* material to the model.

Welcome to my nightmare.

10-round burst.

Thanks so much for all the info, guys. I think it's the "every one of them is different" thing like Crazyhorse said that's giving me a lot of trouble. Ideally I'd like to keep it to two or three variants at most for this long hull boat.

The island and deck edges are next to be unwrapped. Stock carriers and some other third party ones use a wrap-around tile for the edges, which is efficient in terms of texture size, but that won't let me do ambient occlusion or proper weathering in those areas. I'll do my best to find a balance between detail and performance.

I'm going to be out of town the rest of this weekend, but I thought I'd upload one more model before that. I put it together from existing parts and retextured it in about 2-3 hours.

With this ship and the Absalon, the sim will be able to create miniature task forces for the Royal Danish Navy starting from 2011 on terrains like the Baltic Entrance.

I'm going to try and finish am older (and long overdue) carrier first.

The unwrapping is taking forever. There are so many tube-like structures such as gun pits and lookout platforms. They do not respond well to box mapping or flatten mapping. I have to meticulously cylinder-wrap the inside and outside of each one and then manually rescale the uvws.

Then there are these balcony/walkway/lint trap things, highlighted in the pic above. There are dozens and dozens of them spaced around the deck. Because I was an idiot when I first built these sections, I didn't unwrap the first one before cloning it fifty times and placing them. So I've got to do that all over again the right way.

On the other hand, I gave the doors around the ship their own texture already. The reason for this is that it would be too difficult to paint them onto the hull and island textures due to the uvw scaling and angle issues. It's an extra 2500 polygons, but there's no easier way at this point.

Also, I need to know what the original catapults looked like as-built. Can't seem to find photos of that, so any help would be appreciated.

Three French beauties

The Forbin is now finished and uploaded. 

So now we've got all three of France's most modern surface combatants. I think they look quite nice together.

I know some of you are going to bug me for a Charles de Gaulle now,    but I really need to get around to finishing some old projects before I even consider starting something of that scale.

Textures are nearly complete, mostly just need occlusion and weathering. I think I'll be able to finish sooner than I estimated.

Perhaps you didn't see it, but I already said in this thread that I'll be doing the Yamato class. Twice, in fact-- Finishing up the one that russouk2004 provided as a nice place-holder, and (much later) building my own version in far greater detail. I've already built some components for mine, but I estimate it will take about a year to finish. That ship deserves nothing but the best, and I'm going to give it to her.

I'm still really looking forward to your Lupo/Soldati, Maestrale, Padilla, helicopters, etc. How about finishing all those smaller projects before starting anything new?

Mistral missile

Fins are fully animated, etc. etc. If you have any helicopters capable of carrying this weapon, a quick .ini edit will make it into an air-to-air missile.

Five is just the initial order. I'd go so far as to predict that Japan will look into license-building more, as they've done with most US-designed hardware in the past.

Mesh is finished. Initial painting and testing underway.

Haters gonna hate.

Thanks for the info, KJakker. I'll get to work on the missile. Now all I really need is the train/elevation rate for the launcher itself.

The ship in its entirety should be ready in just over one week.

I'm just finishing up the Sadral launcher and about to start texturing everything...

...when I suddenly realized that there is no Mistral in my weapons folder. Huh.

Isn't there one available somewhere? I mean, it's one of the most prolific portable SAMs in the world. It wouldn't be difficult to build one, but I don't wanna waste my time if a model already exists.

Thanks, Suicidal!

I'm in the process of unwrapping parts of the Horizon, but still need to add some details, cut the windows, and build a Sadral launcher.

That Iskander is great! We need more "high value targets" like this. 

I'll consider it after the ship is at full operational capability (in 1~2 years?). By then there will probably be photos and reference material all over the place.

Got it, thanks!